Joanna M. Eng, Contributing Editor

Piano Practice Diary of a New Parent

Piano Practice Diary of a New Parent

Less than a year ago, I was a young professional trying to make time for creative endeavors, including piano practice. I’d been playing piano on and off since starting lessons at age six.

Decode Fast Music with This App

Decode Fast Music with This App

If you’ve ever listened to a professional recording of a piece you’ve been working on for your piano lessons—say Yuja Wang playing Schumann’s The Smuggler—you’ve probably been struck by the obvious: she plays the piece way faster than you do. She plays some passages so fast you can barely process the notes and rhythms in order to see how you should practice.

Finding a Community of Musicians with Hearing Loss

Finding a Community of Musicians with Hearing Loss

At eight years old, Jennifer Castellano learned that she had perfect pitch—and found out that she needed hearing aids for a mild to moderate hearing loss in the middle frequencies, known as a “cookie-bite” loss.

Internalize Tricky Rhythms with a Tapping App

Internalize Tricky Rhythms with a Tapping App

Most pianists have been tripped up by difficult rhythms at one point or another—such as counting a 16th-note rest in a Bach Invention, or trying to play triplets on one hand while maintaining eighth notes with the other.

Learn to Sight-Read with a Disappearing-Score App

Learn to Sight-Read with a Disappearing-Score App

Imagine you’re seated at your piano with sheet music. But as soon as you begin to play the first note in a measure, the entire measure is erased from the score. You’re forced to play what notes you remember and move on, whether you’ve made mistakes or not. This persistent score-eraser chases you until you finish the piece.

Listening App Meludia Teaches Music Theory Intuitively

Listening App Meludia Teaches Music Theory Intuitively

What strikes me first about the online music-learning app Meludia is that it doesn’t tell me precisely what to do. The six initial exercises are arranged in a circle so I’m not sure which one to start with—but the order doesn’t matter.

Paying Attention at a Classical Piano Performance

Paying Attention at a Classical Piano Performance

I’ll admit: I’m not very good at listening to classical music, even at a live concert. The only pieces I can usually fully appreciate at a classical piano concert are ones that are both short and already familiar to me (it helps if I’ve studied them)—and all this only applies if I can see the pianist’s individual fingers moving.

Women Composers Celebrated in Classical Piano Recital

Women Composers Celebrated in Classical Piano Recital

Sometimes I stop and ask myself, among the stacks of Chopin and Debussy and Bach and Beethoven (not to mention Scarlatti and Mussorgsky and Copland and Glass) I’ve been playing for most of my life, why every single one of the classical composers I’m familiar with is a man?

Bringing Joni Mitchell into a Chopin Nocturne

Bringing Joni Mitchell into a Chopin Nocturne

On a whim, I slipped a Joni Mitchell songbook into my tote bag along with my classical piano scores, before scrambling for my keys and rushing out the door for my session at the new music studio where I’ve been practicing once a week, since I don’t have a piano at home.

Simone Dinnerstein Plays The Cohen Variations

Simone Dinnerstein Plays The Cohen Variations

My knowledge of music from the 60s is limited, and I usually don’t have much patience for repetitive melodies, but you can count me as a new fan of Leonard Cohen and his most popular song, “Suzanne.”

A Contemporary Romantic

A Contemporary Romantic

The painter Annika Connor is a Contemporary Romantic, a term that is at once wholly new and yet wonderfully old-fashioned, reminiscent of Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann, members of the Romantic music movement in 19th century Europe.